He calls himself Geoff now but this hasn't much improved his reasoning. Yesterday he was all breathless in linking to a few charts that he thought made a devastating case for his Rothbardian Austrianism. What they showed was the difference between various goods back in the 30s to today. Major clearly thinks this comparison is just devastating to all us pinko Keynesians and Monetarists.
"Someone please rationalize this. Shallow reasoning is preferred."
I've got to hand it to Mark Sadowski, while I differ with him on some important things I think he had the perfect answer here.
"Anything to oblige. Let’s see, I take one look at the name of the commenter and conclude without even looking at his links that it’s BS on stilts. How’s that for shallowness?"
Major also announced that he doesn't celebrate Christmas, for him it's just another day as he's an atheist. I have to disagree with him even here. I'm an atheist too but why would anyone hate on Christmas? It's such a jolly time. I'm serious-I love the spectacle in its pure form. I tend to think that as I don't really believe it's literally true my enjoyment of it is increased. It's not surprising that Major doesn't celebrate any holidays-he's such a heavy cat; by heavy I mean the opposite of 'the Unbearable Lightness of Being.'
http://www.amazon.com/Unbearable-Lightness-Being-Milan-Kundera/dp/0060932139
Ie, he's not exactly a guy for levity. Just so we can have a little levity however, let me look, just for laughs, look at this damning chart of his.
http://i.imgur.com/iGZp1bF.png
What jumps out at you in reading this chart? What jumps out at me is that the year he picks is rather unfortunate if his point is to make us look at this chart with regret-'Wow, if only we were all Austrians today we'd still be paying these low prices.'
I mean 1938 was during a 'double dip' in the middle of the Great Depression. Does anyone really believe that many people were better off then? I shot him a short reply-knowing that engaging him is not advisable.
"Major your choice of years is rather unfortunate. You yourself admit that no Jew would want to live in the time of Nazi Germany-so sometimes you can generalize. I mean so we agree this far: while subjective dispositions do vary greatly, nevertheless no one would prefer to go to the gas chamber. So this generalization is not contested."
"By the logic applied here-that low prices make an age some kind of paradise-late 2008 to early 2009 should have been a paradise-the price of oil and most commodities completely collapsed. I remember that time well and believe me cheap gas for your car doesn’t help when you are out of work and can’t buy gas for it in the first place."
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=25690&cpage=2#comment-308308
His response to me was rather 'shallow' itself.
"Mike:
"Not sure why we should ignore the 75% of the workforce with jobs."
Ok, so we should just kiss off 25% of the population and the economy? This from the same fellow who had piously intoned above that:
"The point I am making is that you can’t just insist that life is better today than in 1938 for every individual. For most you’d probably be right, but I don’t want to ignore the minority just because they’re outnumbered. Democratic thinkers like you are intellectual followers. You just follow the crowd, and there is something wrong with the fringe and the minority. Your posts reek of such irrationalism."
He doesn't want to ignore the minority except if it's 25% who are out of work. Still, the chart, is got more fun in it. I notice that he has cars in 1938 as costing about $14,0000 and change in today's dollars and today's costing about $31,000. I'm not sure what cars he's looking at but from what I've seen is you can still get a decent car for about $14,000 or so. I don't know where the numbers for this chart come from but I don't think the average car is anything like $31,000 today. I mean if you want a higher end car maybe but you can certainly find cheaper cars than this aplenty.
http://autos.aol.com/car-finder/price-under-20000/
P.S. I'll take Mark's description of my blog as well:
"I try and skim your trog posts when I can, if only for the gossip value. With respect to your recent infatuation with Stephen Williamson I generally think it is a mistake to try and second guess other people’ motives. In this particular instance however, my personal opinion is that you’re mistakenly reading your own motives onto Williamson."
Ok, at least he's finds gossip value in it. Economists need their fill of that now and again too. I see he has coined a new genre for me: 'trog.' I'll take it. Hopefully, if you're skimming Mark you liked this one.
"Someone please rationalize this. Shallow reasoning is preferred."
I've got to hand it to Mark Sadowski, while I differ with him on some important things I think he had the perfect answer here.
"Anything to oblige. Let’s see, I take one look at the name of the commenter and conclude without even looking at his links that it’s BS on stilts. How’s that for shallowness?"
Major also announced that he doesn't celebrate Christmas, for him it's just another day as he's an atheist. I have to disagree with him even here. I'm an atheist too but why would anyone hate on Christmas? It's such a jolly time. I'm serious-I love the spectacle in its pure form. I tend to think that as I don't really believe it's literally true my enjoyment of it is increased. It's not surprising that Major doesn't celebrate any holidays-he's such a heavy cat; by heavy I mean the opposite of 'the Unbearable Lightness of Being.'
http://www.amazon.com/Unbearable-Lightness-Being-Milan-Kundera/dp/0060932139
Ie, he's not exactly a guy for levity. Just so we can have a little levity however, let me look, just for laughs, look at this damning chart of his.
http://i.imgur.com/iGZp1bF.png
What jumps out at you in reading this chart? What jumps out at me is that the year he picks is rather unfortunate if his point is to make us look at this chart with regret-'Wow, if only we were all Austrians today we'd still be paying these low prices.'
I mean 1938 was during a 'double dip' in the middle of the Great Depression. Does anyone really believe that many people were better off then? I shot him a short reply-knowing that engaging him is not advisable.
"Major your choice of years is rather unfortunate. You yourself admit that no Jew would want to live in the time of Nazi Germany-so sometimes you can generalize. I mean so we agree this far: while subjective dispositions do vary greatly, nevertheless no one would prefer to go to the gas chamber. So this generalization is not contested."
"1938 America is another year pretty easy to generalize about and be right: 1938 was in the middle of the Great Depression so I don’t think very many at all would want to live in 1938 just when we fell into a second recession during the larger GD."
"Materially at least that was a grim year indeed to be alive. I doubt that a cheap dozen of eggs or carton of milk helps much as the economy was in recession and many people didn’t have jobs."
"By the logic applied here-that low prices make an age some kind of paradise-late 2008 to early 2009 should have been a paradise-the price of oil and most commodities completely collapsed. I remember that time well and believe me cheap gas for your car doesn’t help when you are out of work and can’t buy gas for it in the first place."
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=25690&cpage=2#comment-308308
His response to me was rather 'shallow' itself.
"Mike:
"Major, by what you said, it appears you agree."
“I doubt that a cheap dozen of eggs or carton of milk helps much as the economy was in recession and many people didn’t have jobs.”
"But for those who did…"
"Not sure why we should ignore the 75% of the workforce with jobs."
Ok, so we should just kiss off 25% of the population and the economy? This from the same fellow who had piously intoned above that:
"The point I am making is that you can’t just insist that life is better today than in 1938 for every individual. For most you’d probably be right, but I don’t want to ignore the minority just because they’re outnumbered. Democratic thinkers like you are intellectual followers. You just follow the crowd, and there is something wrong with the fringe and the minority. Your posts reek of such irrationalism."
He doesn't want to ignore the minority except if it's 25% who are out of work. Still, the chart, is got more fun in it. I notice that he has cars in 1938 as costing about $14,0000 and change in today's dollars and today's costing about $31,000. I'm not sure what cars he's looking at but from what I've seen is you can still get a decent car for about $14,000 or so. I don't know where the numbers for this chart come from but I don't think the average car is anything like $31,000 today. I mean if you want a higher end car maybe but you can certainly find cheaper cars than this aplenty.
http://autos.aol.com/car-finder/price-under-20000/
P.S. I'll take Mark's description of my blog as well:
"I try and skim your trog posts when I can, if only for the gossip value. With respect to your recent infatuation with Stephen Williamson I generally think it is a mistake to try and second guess other people’ motives. In this particular instance however, my personal opinion is that you’re mistakenly reading your own motives onto Williamson."
Ok, at least he's finds gossip value in it. Economists need their fill of that now and again too. I see he has coined a new genre for me: 'trog.' I'll take it. Hopefully, if you're skimming Mark you liked this one.
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